The Exhibit Hall at 20 Avenue of the Flags will do two jobs this season. Starting Nov. 27, it is the county's recommended entrance to Marin Center's Holiday Light Spectacular, an outdoor display on the fairgrounds. Eight days earlier, the same address opens a gallery show by artists who spent years building spaceships, creatures and miniatures a few miles east on Kerner Boulevard.

This year that puts the start of San Rafael's holiday season under the Civic Center's blue roof, not on Fourth Street. Downtown's Winter Wonderland has moved to a later Saturday, so Thanksgiving weekend now belongs to Avenue of the Flags. The Marin Model Shop alumni show, the part of the season with the deepest San Rafael roots, runs on a weekday daytime schedule that never overlaps the light show's evenings.

Thanksgiving Weekend Moves North

The Holiday Light Spectacular runs Nov. 27, 2026, through Jan. 3, 2027. It's free, open 5 to 9 p.m. every night including holidays, and goes ahead rain or shine. The county will post a notice on the event page if lightning or high winds cancel a night. Opening night has special entertainment, including a juggler with glow-in-the-dark pins. Food and nonalcoholic drinks are sold nightly.

The display is outdoors and laid out for walking. You can't drive through it, and the paths are accessible throughout. Parking is free in the lot by the Exhibit Hall at 20 Avenue of the Flags and the lot by the Veterans' Memorial Auditorium at 10 Avenue of the Flags. The Exhibit Hall lot has EV charging. Every night there's a free holiday arts and crafts activity indoors. On four Saturday nights the Showcase Theater screens a film:

• Nov. 28, 6 p.m.: Hook, 1991, rated PG
• Dec. 19, 6 p.m.: Ghostbusters, 1984, rated PG
• Dec. 26, 5:30 p.m.: James and the Giant Peach, 1996, rated PG
• Dec. 26, 7 p.m.: The NeverEnding Story, 1984, rated G

Opening weekend has the light show on Friday and Hook on Saturday. Downtown has nothing on its holiday calendar for that weekend this year, which is new.

Twenty Years After Kerner Boulevard

The lineup in the Bartolini Gallery explains why this exhibit belongs in San Rafael. Industrial Light & Magic moved from Van Nuys to Kerner Boulevard in 1978, SFGate reported, and moved to the Presidio in 2005. Lucasfilm put up the building at 3210 Kerner Blvd. in the early 1980s. According to a 2012 Marin Independent Journal report, its soundstage was used for scenes in the "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones" and "Die Hard" series, and Kerner took over the building in 2006. 32TEN Studios took over the building in 2012. In October 2023, the North Bay Business Journal reported that the studio would stay on the site only until Oct. 31 and that the property was being "repurposed."

This winter, the closest a resident can get to that history is a county gallery. "Industrial Art & Magic: Recent Work from the Marin Model Shop Alumni" reunites more than a dozen former members of ILM's Marin Model Shop. They're showing what they've made since leaving the movies: paintings, sculpture, scale models, creatures, mixed-media work and other builds.

The Bartolini Gallery page lists Leigh Barbier, Jean Bolte, Bill George, Jett Green, Michael Lynch, Jeff Mann, Michael Murnane, Randy Ottenberg, Lorne Peterson, Adam Savage, Tony Sommers, Kim Smith and Melanie Walas. The county's Holiday Light Spectacular page also names Dave Fogler. Two pieces from the show are previewed so far: Jeff Mann's black-and-white illustration "The Queen's Ascent," in which a winged insect rises from wildflowers, and Michael Murnane's "Love Chest," a sculpted upper body with hearts coming out of its chest.

Gallery Hours and Light Show Hours Never Meet

The county bills the exhibit as running during the Holiday Light Spectacular, and the dates do overlap. The hours don't. The Bartolini Gallery is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. The lights come on at 5 p.m. That leaves an hour each weekday when neither is open, and the gallery has no weekend hours at all.

Last season the county held one evening program in the gallery, lantern decorating from 5 to 7 p.m. on Dec. 6, 2025, the Marin Independent Journal reported. The county hasn't announced evening gallery hours or an opening reception for this year's show, so if you plan to see both after dark, check the county page close to your visit.

On the posted schedule, the gallery's calendar works out like this:

1. Nov. 19 to Nov. 25. The show opens on Thursday, Nov. 19, a week before the lights. That gives five weekdays to see it before Thanksgiving: Nov. 19, 20, 23, 24 and 25.
2. Nov. 26 and 27. The gallery is closed for the county holidays on Thanksgiving and the day after. That Friday is the light show's opening night, so anyone arriving for opening night will find the gallery closed.
3. Weekdays from Nov. 30 through Jan. 1. The gallery and the lights are both running. A visit that starts in the gallery by 3 p.m. and ends on the lit grounds after 5 is the only way to see both in one trip. The county also lists Dec. 23 and Dec. 25 as gallery closures.
4. Jan. 4 to Jan. 29. The lights are gone and the show stays up for nearly four more weeks. That's the quietest stretch to see it.

For a household that works weekdays, the most realistic window may be a lunch hour, not a holiday evening.

Weekday Mornings Already Lead to Avenue of the Flags

For people who already shop the Civic Center farmers markets, part of that problem solves itself. The Agricultural Institute of Marin's Thursday market runs year-round at 10 Avenue of the Flags from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to the county's Certified Farmers' Markets list. The gallery opens at 10, one address away. That makes Thursday mornings from Nov. 19 on the easiest weekly overlap of the season. The Sunday market in the Civic Center parking lot on Peter Behr Drive keeps the same 8-to-1 hours, but the gallery is closed that day.

Several smaller events lead up to the Civic Center season, and most of them are near the Community Center on B Street:

The Treat Walk is Thursday, Oct. 29. The Goldenaires fair is the season's first Santa appearance. On Nov. 13, the Art Works Downtown Second Friday Art Walk is a chance to walk the self-guided route past the five newest painted utility boxes downtown. That route was launched at an Art Walk gathering at Tutu Lounge, 1335 Fourth St.

Downtown Waits Until Dec. 5

Fourth Street's big holiday day hasn't been cut. It has moved and grown. The City's 2025 notice put the Holiday of Lights and Winter Wonderland on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, at City Plaza, for two evening hours. The City's October announcement of the 45th-anniversary edition calls this year's date new.

Winter Wonderland now runs five hours instead of two, and it opens with afternoon daylight. The event site lists kids' train rides, live music, Santa visits, a play area with inflatables, face painting, kids' entertainers, food and drink vendors, and the tree lighting. The City of San Rafael Library and Recreation Department hosts it with the San Rafael Chamber of Commerce and the Business Improvement District, and it's free.

With the lights and Hook opening the Civic Center on Thanksgiving weekend and the tree lighting on Fourth Street a week later, the ILM alumni show keeps its weekday daytime hours on either side of both, through Jan. 29.

If you're weighing how Civic Center evenings or a Fourth Street afternoon fit into your plans for a home in San Rafael, Elizabeth Green Kilgore is glad to walk through it with you. Request a Personalized Market Consultation.